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From the Foreward by M. K. Gandhi:
The following pages represent a labour of love. Professor Nirmal Kumar Bose first published his selections in 1934 and they contained extracts from my writings up to 1934. But my writings have never ceased and so the Professor felt that he should bring up his selections to as late a date as possible, i. e. up to 1942 with isolated later additions. Though therefore this is called a new edition, it is in reality a new book. The earliest and most elaborate attempt was made by the late Amulakhrai in Gujarati. But that was years ago. He covered my writings in Gujarati and Hindi too. The volumes being in Gujarati never attracted much attention. Such is our disregard of our own languages. But I have known nothing so thorough of its kind as these volumes.
Professor N. K. Bose's is such an attempt. He gave me his manuscript early in 1946 when I was in Bengal to do with it what I liked. But my preoccupations left me no time to look at them till for very shame I was compelled to do so. The selections made by the author show the thoroughness with which he had gone into his subject. Those who are interested in my writings will not fail to appreciate the author's labours.
The book thus covers, in brief, a wide range of subjects and as one progresses in its study, one is often left with a thirst for fuller information on the subject of his interest. The Navajivan Publishing House has been issuing, for some time past, a series of volumes, each containing Gandhiji's writings on one specific topic or another; and the interested reader must turn to them for fuller information, when the files of the Young India or the Harijan are not available to him. The present selection does not pretend to do anything more than give a glimpse of what he can gather if he ventures through the forest of writings contained in those two journals.
The index at the end of the book has been prepared with some care; and we should advise the reader to use it frequently, so that he may profit by similar passages occurring elsewhere in the body of the book.
About the Author:
Professor Nirmal Kumar Bose was born in Kolkata on 22nd January, 1901 and passed away on 15th October, 1972, leaving behind him a monumental socio-economic contributions to be cherished by his countrymen. He dwelt upon a wide-range of disciplines of knowledge - social and cultural history, political science, architecture, human geography. His scientific curiosity in anthropological investigations was always matched by profound concern for human welfare.
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